Describing the "Next-Higher Level"

And Deciphering the Point of This "Level"

Copyright © 1997 Mike Strong

Two Points: 1) the next level is badly understood by us 2) it bears a strong resemblance to a training situation.

Question point: What is an individual?

I'm am calling the place we go to after death the "next-higher level". I'm not entirely happy with the term. I am choosing to use this because various other terms (i.e. heaven, valhalla, etc.) have too much definition baggage. For that matter calling something a "level" especially with the "next-higher" attached to it sounds like some fuzzy-headed cult term. At least the term is indefinite enough that I feel it is available to play with. Also, the word "level" implies a difference in elevation or in accomplishment or in capability. More than that I don't wish to imply.


A Place Not Well Understood

In my role as a programmer I am very aware of the enormous differences between the way humans and computers work to make decisions. Even when very clever programming creates responses which are able to mimic human responses the machines have obvious limits. Usually they can be tripped up by making the machine answer questions beyond its programmed parameters. Even when such a machine manages to equal or surpass a human's ability to do some well-defined task the machine has to do it in a brute force manner which is incredibly inefficient compared to a human.

To repeat, humans and computers do the same tasks using vastly different mechanisms and universes of difference in terms of awareness.

This leads me to an analogy for understanding the next-higher level. Imagine that one of our "thinking" machines were to ask itself who had made it? Did "The Programmer" really exist? Do "users" really visit the keyboard? What is life outside the computer case like? It might try to describe the great CPU and the hall of Registers, the bureau of peripherals and the great, mysterious programming source flowing through all that is the machine.

In other words, just like us, the machine would have to describe something totally different from its own perspective. That perspective is based on a perception of itself. No more. For all the satisfaction this machine might feel in trying to describe The Programmer, this machine would be ludicrously off base.

So too for our attempts to describe "levels" beyond our awareness. We can do a lot of studying and can get into energetic and stimulating philosophical discusions but our efforts fall at least as short of reality as would the machine's efforts.

When I hear someone going on about angels, hosts, heavenly heirarchies, heaven, palaces, god in a throne, god's right hand or god's left hand and so forth I remember our limits in being able to dechiper what comes to us from that "next-higher level.". Clearly these are analogies derived from human cultures and government models. That realization by itself should make us suspicious of these labels.

I don't pretend that I can flesh out a good description of that next level but I don't mind advising anyone to throw away at least 99.997-percent of those heaven and heaven's host descriptions. Of the many near-death experiences we have only a very few go much further than saying that they were headed to a destination, that a being of light met them, and that there may have been a review of their lives. When something or someone is described in a more conventional manner (i.e. the being of light is Jesus, Krishna, etc.) the experience remains the same except for the assignment of a personality identified by that person's culture.

There are some accounts which go further but I almost always have a large problem with them. They very quickly feel false to me, partly just a feeling that something is off and then, as I look more analytically, the quantity and type of detail clearly are constructs from cultural knowledge. I will list Betty J. Eadie's work here as hitting me in this manner. I know huge numbers of people hang on her every word but I felt from the beginning that something was amiss with her.

That was from an early skimming of her first book. Since the book was co-written I thought that perhaps the writer had managed to impose his own expressions on top of her accounts. Then I encountered her on a television talk show and she sounded exactly the same. I concluded that the writer had indeed done a good job of accurately capturing her. That left the analysis for me. I decided that not just her detail but her preaching that Jesus was the right way (I believe deeply that God is not denominational) were suspicious. Her refusal to release the simple details of the hospital name and doctor name so that at the very least her presence in the hospital at the time of her claimed experience could be verified are just not credible. I cannot imagine an honest reason to avoid this. This suggests either that no hospital would have a record of her as a patient because she wasn't or that the circumstances of her being there were not honest. Could be a fraudulent admission, an admission with a condition which would produce some sort of delirium, etc. Without data we wind up imagining anything.

I really believe Eadie is a simple fraud. Before I wrote this I went out to a bookstore and bought a copy of her first book. I wanted to either confirm my earlier view or see whether I now believed her. My original feelings about her only deepened. This time I really read the book (before I had only skimmed over it in the bookstore). I picked out point after point that I had major problems with. I believe that if she had any kind of experience at all she has hugely elaborated on it.

Another book (this one a novel) that I have a problem with is The Celestine Prophecy. Terribly cheesy plot suitable only for the worst TV movie of any week and ten fictional revelations which I am supposed to believe are profound. At best they are a mediocre rip-off of old guru stuff from the 70's. The cheap plot device of suppression by a banana-type republic doesn't help it. This just emphasizes how weak is the material and how second rate the author.

Governments suppressing something or someone are among the cheapest and most easily available plot devices used to make something sound like a big deal. These devices are used by writers without better ideas and by militia organizations with persons who can't otherwise feel important and by people who want flying saucers to exist in area 51. A little critical logical thinking is needed here.

That is already more type than I feel justified wasting on the Celestine material except to note that most of the persons who are enthralled with this book and who recommended it to me are among those people whose judgment and mental sharpness I most respect. I just disagree a lot on this one.

The Training Situation

As an analogy maybe you could imagine some medieval kingdom sending off explorers to the new world. A major condition is that these explorers must go naked to the new world. They are to accomplish all they are able in this new world and then return. When they return they must return naked. Nothing may be brought back except themselves - the person they have become as a result of their experiences and the knowledge and skills they learned. Perhaps we can think of ourselves as such explorers.

Our normal inability to see the future or to see the universe as thoroughly as do many near-death experiencers at the time of their approach toward death may have a reason related to our purpose here rather than being a measure of our incapacity. We might look for an analog to our own methods for training people.

Whether training by experience or in a classroom it would be unusual to get the entire course thrown at you the second you walked into the class. During the course of training a good instructor will often allow a student to "blunder" into a wrong answer in order to figure a way out.

The idea is that teaching is something of a misnomer. It is really guiding someone in their learning exploration. As we learn there are somethings we tend to learn better when we blunder and then correct ourselves. If indeed this is some kind of giant classroom or boarding school it is one which uses exploration as a method for us to learn."Lecture" time seems to be limited. We humans are not unique in this. Watch a movie about an animal mother and she will let the young one go so far exploring and bumbling into things before pulling her child back.

Compared to information gleaned from books, information gained through experience is usually far more thoroughly learned. Knowing too much about what will happen around the next corner might well weaken our learning.

That seems a not unreasonable speculation. But that is all it is. And it is speculation based on what little we know from within this level's perspective.

 


 

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